ST. LOUIS — Does Edmonton Oilers coach Ken Hitchcock play pressure defence because (A) he wants to, or (B) he has to?

Looks like (A), and he’s only been on the job for eight games after replacing Todd McLellan, who knew this reality long before he was let go. This is not a team that can out-score its mistakes.

It’s a team that lives on the edge, going 9-3 in one-goal games, which is why they’re 14-12-2. They play hard, they totally overwhelmed St. Louis the last 40 minutes Wednesday, and give them credit for battling back from a 2-0 hole. But their group of wingers hasn’t taken flight at all one-third of the way down the 2018 NHL runway.

And while it hasn’t crippled their record, their offence has been limping, and 28 games is no small sample size.

Hitchcock and his predecessor have squeezed as much as they can out of a team that might have the most offensively challenged group of wingers in the league.

All these 2-1, 3-2 games where the Oilers are either tied after 40 minutes or a goal behind are because that’s the only way Hitchcock thinks his team can win, even with the electric Connor McDavid. Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. Because, save for the best free-agent signing in the league in Alex Chiasson, and Drake Caggiula, who has the chops to maybe be a 20-goal guy down the road, no other forward scores.

There’s lots of try with these Oilers, who don’t take many nights off, forecheck industriously and now play zone defence in their end rather than the more man-to-man style employed by McLellan. But this is why Hitchcock is pumping the tires of his goalies Mikko Koskinen and Cam Talbot so vigorously.

“This is the strength of our team,” said Hitchcock, who has been around the NHL block many times and sees a flawed, top heavy maximum-cap team with three natural centres in McDavid, Draisaitl and Nugent-Hopkins making $27 million, yet just one winger with 100 or more career goals.

After Milan Lucic’s 193 goals, Chiasson is next with 70.

Yeah, we know: No Taylor Hall. No Jordan Eberle.

This is on general manager Peter Chiarelli. Not Hitchcock and not McLellan, of course, and the Chiarelli undoubtedly knows it. He made two astute moves bringing in Chiasson and signing Koskinen, but you could drive a truck through the holes on the wing.

Tons of will, but they would die for even a David Perron on the roster.

The ones currently there average 2.61 goals and they’ve been very healthy. Only five teams have produced less.

Edmonton’s weakness is right-wing, of course. There’s no obvious first-liner who could get 30 goals a season. There’s no second-line right-winger who has a history of 20 goals every year.

Yeah, Eberle would look good there, even if he left in a salary dump.

It’s a major complication for Hitchcock, and McLellan before him.

Hitchcock has no firm third line he can put out with any offensive juice, which means he ends up playing fourth-line centre Kyle Brodziak more than he should.

And on and on it goes …

In an NHL where 351 players have at least three goals – which breaks down to about 11 a team – the Oilers have six. Five forwards: McDavid, Draisaitl, Nugent-Hopkins, Caggiula, Chiasson; along with defenceman Oscar Klefbom. They have five wingers: Ty Rattie (2 goals), Jesse Puljujarvi (2), Lucic (1), Jujhar Khaira (1) and Zack Kassian (1); with seven goals and the season is already one-third over.

He’s also got two centres: Brodziak (2) and Ryan Spooner (2).

Again, there is lots of try here, lots of emotion and commotion, but we’ve been down the Lucic road, paved in two goals over his last 74 games, so many times, it’s painful to keep going there. After 28 games last year, he had five goals and 19 points. He has one goal and four points today. And Kassian’s nice shorthanded move in St. Louis, where he busted around people only to have his shot go off Jake Allen’s shoulder and harmlessly onto the back of the netting was symptomatic of both his own struggles, also the Oilers’ as a team.

Seven times they’ve scored one or fewer goals, 15 times two or less.

They don’t shoot enough: Lucic (30), Rattie (30) Kassian (27), Khaira (22), Puljujarvi (22); or score enough. Their shots-to-goals is about six per cent, and while they could use Tobias Rieder’s hustle and defensive acumen when he returns, he has 33 shots and no goals in 18 games..

Hitchcock is finding out what his predecessor knew only too well. There aren’t going to be any 9-6 games even with McDavid, who has figured in almost half of their 73 goals, and Draisaitl, who is a point-a-game player. They are nothing like the team down the road in Calgary, which has scored five goals in a single period four times this season. That is a deep team that had nine goals in 60 minutes against Columbus.

If Hitchcock wants to play Chiasson on his first line with McDavid and Draisaitl, rewarding him for his 11 goals and 30.6 shot percentage and willingness to get his hands dirty and score, then he needs two second-line wingers for Nugent-Hopkins.

Say, a Matthew Tkachuk (13 goals) in Calgary or even a Ryan Dzingel in Ottawa. Like Draisaitl, when he plays centre not wing, the second line with Nugent-Hopkins is a helicopter line.

Caggiula, Rattie, Puljujarvi, Khaira have 66 career goals and are really young, third-liners at the moment.

Lucic should be no worse than top-six with his years of NHL service.

He never ducks the scoring question but his hands have gone into the ether.

We found out what a superstar-less Edmonton Oilers team is like, and it wasn’t pretty when Connor McDavid sat out his team’s game on the road against the Dallas Stars when he fell ill.

While it was just one game, short of expecting McDavid to be the ultimate iron-man, illness and injuries do happen, and the Oilers certainly looked like they were running on a lower-octane fuel minus him. What it did was magnify the team’s current lack of depth on the wings.

Podcast host Craig Ellingson talks to hockey beat writer Derek Van Diest about McDavid’s absence and about the NHL’s approval of a Seattle team for the 2021-22 season — a new rival for the Oilers playing in the Pacific Division.

When my assistant said there was a call from the White House, I picked up, said 'Hello' and started to ask if this was a prank

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